For the majority of us, appearing nude in public —especially on an occasion where we’re the centre of attention—is the stuff of nightmares. But for Bianca Censori, it’s a regular Saturday night (or Monday morning). Since marrying Ye (formerly known as Kanye West), the architect has become somewhat averse to clothes: she's regularly papped next-to-naked—often flouting public decency laws—at dinners, coffee runs, and, as of last night, The 2025 Grammys.
Yet although the trial-by-internet netizens put Censori’s provocative style down to her husband Kanye West, who styled his exes Julia Fox and Kim Kardashian, Censori has never been averse to provocative fits, per leaked photos of her pre-Ye. Yet when she started dating West, her signature low-cut tops became muted, Yeezy-style athleisure, sparking criticism that he was trying to turn her into a “Kardashian Klone.”
But Bianca’s looks soon evolved: her athleisure wear was swapped for nude tights, body jewellery, or boots, and she was seen clutching a pillow or stuffed animal to her chest—a look internet neologists coined pillowcore. Eventually, the pillows were left in the bedroom and Censori’s go-to look became a skin-coloured body stocking, which thickened to obscure the bikini region. At yesterday’s Grammys, however, her custom Yeezy dress was NSFW (it was entirely transparent).
The look immediately ignited a sh*t-storm online, not least because Censori's nudity was brought into sharp relief by the fact that Kanye was fully, clothed. As the dress was a Yeezy couture original, fans are assuming she was dressed by her husband (though she does have her own stylist, Gadir Rajab), and it's been well documented that someone controlling their partner’s clothes can be symptomatic of, at worst, an abusive relationship, or at best, a power imbalance.
Indeed, when the couple’s relationship is placed under the microscope, that power imbalance becomes undeniable. Ye is a world-famous musician and producer, while Censori, until recently, was a little-known architect (her pre-Kanye digital footprint is little more than a LinkedIn profile.) There’s also a seventeen-year age gap between the pair. Throughout the course of their relationship, West has openly referred to Censori as his “muse.” And the artist-muse dynamic has drawn criticism and interrogation for centuries: is the word “muse” reductive? Does it flatten the role the inspiration behind an artist’s work plays, silencing their voice?
And you'd be hard-pressed to find a more literal example of a silentmuse than Censori. Though she’s been in the public eye for almost three years, She hasn’t spoken in public, or in writing, throughout that time. (The only public footage of her speaking is from a conference years before her persona went public.) This has rendered her—in the internet’s eyes at least— an unwitting doll (or fembot, given her scantily clad outfits) that Kanye exerts control over and plays dress up with.
To what extent the pair collaborate on Censori’s looks is, of course, the burning question, as is how enthusiastic she is to wear such ensembles (or lack thereof). Kanye's case, of course, isn’t helped by Censori’s signature deer-in-headslights gaze, or the apparent reluctance with which she dropped her jacket the other night. But given the fact that Censori was allegedly well-covered on a recent trip to Australia when Kanye wasn’t around, feminist journalists and internet sleuths alike suspect her styling is Ye-imposed.
Perhaps viewers are so triggered by the situation because it's a microcosm of wider gender codes: the historic expectation that women bare the elements in skirts or dresses while men remain comfortably well-covered. I mean, on top of the objectification and power imbalance, Censori must be cold.
Images via Getty
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